


Remedy

by wynnebat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Marriage Proposal, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 06:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20466449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: “You want to get out of here?” Kingsley asks instead, finishing off his drink.Hestia smiles at him. It almost comes out naturally. “Does that ever work for you?”“Only with you.”“I’m easy like that,” she replies, and she holds his hand to apparate them to her home. She says, “Hestia Jones lives at 98 Spring Lane,” and Kingsley remembers her house again.





	Remedy

The world doesn’t immediately right itself when Voldemort falls. Kingsley doesn’t expect it to, but once the initial relief passes, the weariness seeps into his bones. He ignores it, helping those who had been injured in the battle and apprehending any Death Eaters that hadn’t immediately fled the scene. He’s not an active auror, hasn’t been since before the war broke out. It’s not his job go after them.

It’s not his job to apparate the wounded to St. Mungo’s, nor to gather the survivors and the dead. It’s not his job to stay until he physically can’t, then carry his tired body to the over-packed Hog’s Head.

It is only then that he lets himself mourn, drink in hand and thoughts of people he’d lost. His friends and enemies who he’d fought and hated for long enough to be strangely bereft without them in the world, acquaintances and colleagues, longtime Order members and those who hadn’t been of age during the first war.

His mentor is dead. His best friend and her husband followed him into their afterlife. Kingsley had been so fucking young at the end of the first war, and now he sits here surrounded by mourners and can’t remember how he’d made himself alright again.

One foot after another, year after year, and this will be just a memory. He’d sent out his patronus to let his parents and siblings know he’d lived through the battle and that the war is over. They’ll ask him to come home, knowing he won’t, and he’ll ask them to return, knowing they won’t.

Kingsley feels like a broken wand, patched together with enough spellotape that there’s a snitch-sized lump in the middle.

Even in the bustle and chaos of the aftermath, in the dark corner of the Hog’s Head he’d secluded himself in, Hestia finds him. She swaps out his empty bottle with a full one without a word. They toast in silence.

Kingsley watches her down her drink, remembers her as a long-haired fifth year sneaking illegal spirits into the school. Each generation of Hogwarts thinks they’ve discovered the passageways for the first time, as Kingsley has come to understand, and it fills him with nostalgia. They’d been kids.

And now there are kids lying dead on the Hogwarts lawn.

Or maybe not anymore—maybe someone came for the bodies.

Kingsley has been too busy drowning himself one drink at a time.

“You came after all,” Kingsley says, firewhiskey burning its way down his throat. It’s not his preference, but when Hestia chooses to drink, she goes for something to remember.

Hestia nods. Her voice is rough as she says, “I got the message. I couldn’t ignore it, not if there was any chance that we could end the war.” She sets her drink on the uneven countertop. A blasting curse had gone through the table, but it’s upright enough for them. “You going back?”

Kingsley looks at her, sighs. “I’d be an idiot to go back.” He’d barely gotten out without a prison sentence. Hestia had been the smart one. She’d told Dumbledore that she has a young kid at home, that he can shove his spying bit up his ass, and summarily quit her position at the ministry once right before the war broke out. And yet here she is.

“Worse than an idiot,” Hestia agrees.

For a moment, Kingsley considers leaving the country like his family had in the first years of the first war. Kingsley had insisted on going to Hogwarts and somehow his parents had allowed it. And then he’d never quite managed to leave this place. His parents have a nice place in Bangladesh. His older sister would let him have her guest bedroom in the States as long as he wants it as long as he babysits her kid. If Gringotts is open—and the goblins wouldn’t let a small thing such as a regime change keep them from conducting their business—he could withdraw enough funds to go on an extended holiday. Tonks always said he needed to take a break.

He could let someone else deal with the fallout. The bodies, the grief and the anger, the absolute mess that the ministry must be in.

“You want to get out of here?” Kingsley asks instead, finishing off his drink.

Hestia smiles at him. It almost comes out natural. “Does that ever work for you?”

“Only with you.”

“I’m easy like that,” she replies, and she holds his hand to apparate them to her home. She says, “Hestia Jones lives at 98 Spring Lane,” and Kingsley remembers her house again.

It had hurt, waking up in the middle of the war, and not remembering her address anymore. He knows why she did it. He might have done the same thing, if he had someone to look after. But he’d been bereft, empty at the thought that he wouldn’t see her for as long as the war lasted. Not with the _Fidelius_ in place.

Drunken appartition isn’t the worst thing Kingsley’s ever done, but it’s up there. They’re very lucky they don’t get splinched. Hestia is wobbly on her feet as she checks on her kid’s room and with Maudy, the house elf. Her house elf is still the one from when they were kids. Kingsley glances inside little Charlie’s room and sees the faces of every teenager felled in battle. The way to Hestia’s bedroom, and best of all her shower, is familiar. Kingsley retraces the steps he hasn’t taken in a year. First because he’d been too terrified to bring dark wizards to Hestia’s home by accident, no matter how much he missed her, then because he simply couldn’t.

He hopes Charlie still remembers him. Kingsley has been a guest in Hestia’s home often throughout the years, back before Charlie’s father entered the picture and after he left, but kids that young are forgetful, and it’s been a long year. He throws his robes and everything else in the hamper and steps into the shower. It turns on and switches to his preferred temperature automatically.

Kingsley stands there for what feels like forever. He doesn’t move until Hestia joins him and runs soapy hands along his shoulders. Her hair is tied up in a bun to keep it dry. A few brown curls reach down, becoming targets of the water’s spray. She doesn’t seem to notice. When Kingsley kisses her, it’s never felt more like coming home.

Enough of the stress of war fades that his shoulders loosen under her touch. His muscles remember what it feels like to relax. His mind doesn’t, but it’s alright. There will be time to relearn old patterns.

“I’ve missed you,” Kingsley says, resting his head on the crook of her shoulder, the water spraying down on him. He’s missed her touch, her smell, her everything. He’s missed coming for dinner with highly edited stories of life in the auror department, fielding Charlie’s many questions, then spending the night and telling her a less edited version. He wants that again like he’s never wanted anything more.

“Missed you, too,” Hestia murmurs. Her touch feels kinder than he deserves. “You have me, Kingsley. It’ll be okay.”

Eventually, she tugs him out of the shower and dries them both with a charm. She hates those, Kingsley remembers, but today’s an exception. Dry skin is alright on the day a war ends.

The bed is warm. Hestia’s skin is warmer.

“Why didn’t we ever get married?” Kingsley asks, pressing a kiss against the closest part of her that he can reach. He decides then and there that he’s never getting out of this bed again. In the morning, Charlie can join them, but that’s it. He’s sick of strangers, of desperately protecting them and being unable to keep them all safe.

Hestia huffs at him in that way he’s missed so much. “You insisted on being an auror and I can’t handle that kind of stress.”

“Mm,” Kingsley agrees. “And so you joined the Order.”

“You were hiding things from me. I couldn’t handle not knowing what it was,” she murmurs, stroking his head. She sniffles a little. Kingsley opens his eyes, wrests himself up and reaches out to wrap his arms around her. “I’m glad you’re alright, Kingsley. I really am. I hated not knowing if you were alive or dead.”

It feels unbearable to hear those words from her. Kingsley breathes in, out, lets the words settle around him. “I’m alive.” Unlike so many people, he’s alive. He’d been younger last time around. Bounced back easier, bore less responsibility on his shoulders. Without Albus or Mad-Eye, he had been relegated to the head of the Order. He’d hated it. He’d also been good at it. He adds, because he has to, because he’s never lied to Hestia if he could avoid it, “I’m still an idiot.”

“I know.” She laughs, holds him tighter. “I’ll help you in any way I can, you know that, right?”

“I do,” he promises. It’s not quite the promise he’s always wanted to make to her, but it’s close enough. “I’ll go in tomorrow, see what can be done.”

The ministry will be a mess. It will be arduous, terrible work to cleanse it of Voldemort’s influence. Kingsley’s always liked a challenge. Neither he has ever been able to walk away from duty.

Hestia kisses him and Kingsley sighs against her. She says, “You can marry me if you want.”

It’s not the way he’d ever expected her to accept his proposal, and he’s made a few over the years. He’ll take it. Even if Hestia wakes up in the morning and tells him she’s still not ready, it’s enough for tonight. “I hope no one raided my flat. Your ring is in the back of my closet.”

“You haven’t been carrying it on you? Witch Weekly would be upset with you.”

“Just a photograph of you,” Kingsley replies, kissing her cheek. One of several. All spelled to hell and back, and made to look like something inconsequential. He’d trusted Hestia’s wards to hold, but he hadn’t wanted her to face even a small bit of scrutiny. Kingsley had been captured once during the war. It hadn’t lasted long, but it had been long enough.

Hestia makes a face at his sappiness and Kingsley kisses her again, and again, and again, until she looks at him like she did in peacetime.

In the morning, Kingsley wakes first. He slips out of the bed as quietly as he can. Charlie and Maudy are already awake and at the kitchen table. Charlie throws herself at him and Kingsley isn’t bowled over physically, but emotionally is another matter. She’s grown. He’d prepared himself for it, but it hadn’t been enough. Her hair is soft and her cheeks are red, and she likes dinosaurs now, even though Maudy is convinced they aren’t real.

Her enthusiasm tides him over when he makes a stop at his flat. It had been ransacked, but he’d sent his important possessions to his parents for safekeeping. Hestia’s ring had been hidden. He’d thought about sending it on, but he hadn’t wanted it so far away. Nor could he keep it on himself.

When he returns, he offers it to her, and Hestia slips it onto her finger.

Only hours later, someone from the minister’s office arrives, and says they’re in need of an interim minister. Of what, Kingsley almost says, before he understands.

Minister of Magic. It’s never been his goal.

“Don’t sit for a portrait,” Hestia tells him, adjusting the collar of his robes. “Those things are creepy when you’re still alive. You’ll have yourself staring down at you from the wall.”

“That’s only for proper ministers,” Kingsley says, and shakes his head at the look she gives him. “I’m only going to be there for a year.”

Breakfast is long. They’re stretching it out, holding onto the morning for as long as they’re able.

“Maybe two,” Kingsley eventually relents. “One term at most if there isn’t a good candidate available.”

“Minister Shacklebolt,” Hestia says with a laugh. “It sounds good.”

“It sounds old and stuffy.”

“We’re old and stuffy, as Charlie keeps reminding me,” Hestia says, amused. “I’m going to Hogwarts. Minerva can tell me what needs to be done. Off with you. Don’t let them swear you in without a ceremony. I’d like to be there.”

“Alright,” Kingsley agrees. “You could wear your blue robes for it.”

“I might,” she says, but she’s smiling.

It doesn’t feel real yet, not quite. But it will. Day after day, night after night, and one day he will look around and it will finally feel like peacetime. Until then, he will wait, and work, and maybe even get Hestia to the altar. Tonks and Moody won’t be there to see it from this world, but he hopes that they’ll get a glimpse from the next great adventure. Just a peak, here and there.

“Minister Shacklebolt,” he says to himself. It’s not terrible.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm also on [tumblr](https://wynnefic.tumblr.com/).


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